Are your question "What happens when you reach the limits?" or "How to avoid reaching the limits?"?
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N.N.Aug 12 '11 at 13:54

2

"eTeX is out of question"? Modern versions of pdflatex are based on eTeX! Or do you mean the etex package? Do you use an older version? What happens when one level is reached? I guess that the compilation stops with some over-limit error. That's it! Please refine your question so that it is clearer what the answers should contain.
–
Martin Scharrer♦Aug 12 '11 at 14:03

1 Answer
1

If you exceed the "out of" pdftex will simply allocate more memory, and unless the allocation fails (unlikely unless you are running pdftex on something very small like your router, your smart phone or your renovated pdp-11) you won't notice anything, except the "out of" number will be larger in the log file.

If you exceed the "max" then you'll get a fatal error and a message like this:

namedest.tex:39: TeX capacity exceeded, sorry [pool size=3148339]
If you really absolutely need more capacity,
you can ask a wizard to enlarge me.

Most of the time, this indicates that you have a serious error in your input, such as an infinite loop, but if you really need to enlarge, then most distributions have a way to do so: eg, web2c based distributions (most) can use a file texmf.cnf that contains the limits. You may also need to regenerate the formats for pdftex to notice certain of the changed limits.